It’s Not a Myth—and a Christmas in July Giveaway

By Kathleen Rice Adams

My first few months as a bona-fide fiction author have been quite a whirlwind. Between December 2013 and June 2014, I saw the publication of five 10,000-word short stories. Creating that much usable content in so short a time is a spritely clip for anyone, but for someone who works one full-time job and one part-time job—and, for a while, was caring for an invalid—the pace is a mite grueling.

I mention the above only to let other authors and aspiring authors know the myth of the bleary-eyed writer who exists on coffee and adrenaline while toiling away in hermit-like seclusion is not a myth. Such writers exist all over the world. Call us obsessive-compulsive, self-destructive, or just plain idiotic…but also call us happy. There’s nothing like wrestling ill-behaved fictional people into submission and seeing the results in print. Creating stories of all lengths fuels our very existence.

It’s true, you know: Some of us write not because we can, but because not writing would represent an emotional and intellectual death sentence.

The first novella-length story to emerge from the marathon writing jag was “Peaches,” which—like a first child—always will occupy a special place in my heart. Originally published in Prairie Rose Publications’ debut anthology Wishing for a Cowboy, it’s now available as a standalone read with a gorgeous cover created by PRP co-founder Livia Washburn Reasoner. Cheryl Pierson, PRP’s other co-founder, proved to be every author's dream as an editor. (Please buy a copy of Peaches. I’m begging you. Only if everyone on the planet succumbs to my totally self-serving plea will I ever be able to quit the day job and save what little remains of my sanity. At only 99 cents, it's a bargain. Really!)

Peaches
Running a ranch and fending off three meddlesome aunts leaves Whit McCandless no time, and even less patience, for the prickly new schoolmarm’s greenhorn carelessness. The teacher needs educating before somebody gets hurt.

Ruth Avery can manage her children and her school just fine without interference from some philistine of a rancher. If he’d pay more attention to his cattle and less to her affairs, they’d both prosper.

He didn’t expect to need rescuing. She never intended to fall in love.


Wishing for a Cowboy remains a source of great pride for everyone at PRP. Reviews were overwhelmingly positive, leaving all of us feeling a bit like Sally Field, seemingly awe-struck when she won the Best Actress Oscar for her role in 1984’s Places in the Heart: “You like me. You really like me.” (The quote is erroneous, but it’s punchier than what Field actually said.)

I’m more disposed to echo Sean Penn’s parody of Field’s quote when he won the 1996 Independent Spirit Award for Best Male Lead in Dead Man Walking: “You tolerate me. You really tolerate me.”

“Charlie’s Pie,” Livia J. Washburn’s story in WFAC, won the 2014 Peacemaker Award for Best Short Fiction. Considering her story competed head-to-head with one penned by legendary western author Jory Sherman, Livia’s win was quite an honor, and one she richly deserved. (Charlie’s Pie also is available now as a single.)

I hope to see the other four anthology stories I wrote over the past six months published as standalones, too. I’m equally proud of those. Please indulge me while I mention them.

“The Second-Best Ranger in Texas”

in Hearts and Spurs
His partner’s grisly death destroyed Texas Ranger Quinn Barclay. Cashiered for drunkenness and refusal to follow orders, he sets out to fulfill his partner’s dying request, armed only with a saloon girl’s name.

Sister María Tomás thought she wanted to become a nun, but five years as a postulant have convinced her childhood dreams aren’t always meant to be. At last ready to relinquish the temporary vows she never should have made, she begs the only man she trusts to collect her from a mission in the middle of nowhere.

When the ex-Ranger’s quest collides with the ex-nun’s plea in a burned-out border town, unexpected love blooms among shared memories of the dead man who was a brother to them both.

Too bad he was also the only man who could have warned them about the carnage to come.

 

“The Worst Outlaw in the West”

in Lassoing a Groom
Laredo Hawkins has one ambition: to redeem his family’s honor by pulling the first successful bank robbery in the Hawkins clan’s long, disappointing history. Spinster Prudence Barrett is desperate to save her family’s bank from her brother’s reckless investments. A chance encounter between the dime-novel bandit and the old maid may set the pair on a path to infamy…if either can find a map.

“The Big Uneasy”

in Lassoing a Mail-Order Bride
To escape the unthinkable with a man about whom she knows too much, New Orleans belle Josephine LaPierre agrees to marry a Texan about whom she knows nothing.

Falling in love with his brother was not part of her plan.

“Making Peace”

in Cowboy Cravings
After four long years in hell, Confederate cavalry officer Bennett Collier just wants to go home—assuming home still exists. Widowed Jayhawker Maggie Fannin will hold onto her home at any cost…even if she must face down the imposing Rebel soldier who accuses her of squatting. (Spicy.)






Peaches and ten other short, holiday-themed reads—plus three full-length novels and two boxed sets—are part of Prairie Rose Publications’ Christmas in July event. The complete list is available here.

Because I’m grateful to every reader who’s ever been kind enough (or brave enough) to give a debut author a chance, I’ll give away a copy of Peaches to two folks who comment today. Please don't forget to leave your email address.

Thank all of y’all for stopping by!

Is that a gun in your pocket, or...?

By Kathleen Rice Adams

Life is full of little ironies. Every so often, a big irony jumps up and literally grabs a person by the privates. Just ask late Texas lawman Cap Light.

Many of the details about William Sidney “Cap” Light’s life have been obscured by the sands of time. His exact birth date is unknown, though it’s said he was born in late 1863 or early 1864 in Belton, Texas. No photographs of him are known to exist, although there seem to be plenty of his infamous brother-in-law, the confidence man and gold-rush crime boss Soapy Smith. Several of Light’s confirmed line-of-duty kills are mired in controversy, and rumors persist about his involvement in at least one out-and-out murder. Even the branches of his family tree are a mite tangled, considering the 1900 census credited Light with fathering a daughter born six years after his death.

What seems pretty clear, however, is that Light survived what should have been a fatal gunshot wound to the head only to kill himself accidentally a year later.

Light probably lived an ordinary townie childhood. The son of a merchant couple who migrated to Texas from Tennessee, he followed an elder brother into the barbering profession before seeking and receiving a deputy city marshal’s commission in Belton at the age of 20. Almost immediately—on March 24, 1884—he rode with the posse that tracked down and killed a local desperado. Belton hailed the young lawman as a hero.

For five years, Light reportedly served the law in an exemplary, and uneventful, fashion. Then, in 1889, things began to change.

In August, while assisting the marshal of nearby Temple, Texas, Light shot a prisoner he was escorting to jail. Ed Cooley tried to escape, Light said. Later that fall, after resigning the Belton job to become deputy marshal in Temple, Light shot and killed Sam Hasley, a deputy sheriff with a reputation for troublemaking. Hasley, drunk and raising a ruckus, ignored Light’s order to go home. Instead, he rode his horse onto the boardwalk and reached for his gun. Light responded with quick, accurate, and deadly force.

The following March, Light cemented his reputation as a fast and deadly gunman when he killed another drunk inside Temple’s Cotton Exchange Saloon. According to the local newspaper’s account, Felix Morales died “with his pistol in one hand and a beer glass in the other.”

Light’s growing reputation as a no-nonsense straight-shooter served Temple so well that in 1891, the city cut its budget by discontinuing the deputy marshal’s position. Unemployed and with a wife and two toddlers to support, Light accepted his brother-in-law’s offer of a job in Denver, Colorado. By then, Jeff “Soapy” Smith was firmly in control of Denver’s underworld. After the Glasson Detective Agency allegedly leaned on one of Smith’s young female friends, Light took part in a pistol-wielding raid meant to convince the detectives that investigating Smith would not be healthy.

Creede, Colorado, c. 1892

In early 1892, Smith moved his criminal enterprise to the nearby boomtown of Creede, Colorado, where he reportedly exerted his considerable influence to have Light appointed deputy marshal. At a little after 4 o’clock in the morning on March 31, Light confronted yet another drunk in a saloon. Both men drew their weapons. When the hail of gunfire ceased, Light remained standing, unscathed. Gambler and gunfighter William “Reddy” McCann, on the other hand, sprawled on the floor, his body riddled with five of Light’s bullets.

Despite witness testimony stating McCann had emptied his revolver shooting at streetlights immediately before bracing the deputy marshal, a coroner’s inquest ruled the shooting self-defense. The close call rattled Light, though. He took his family and returned to Temple, where in June 1892 he applied for a detective’s job with the Gulf, Colorado & Santa Fe Railroad. His application was rejected—possibly because his association with Smith and lingering rumors about the McCann incident overshadowed the stellar reputation he had earned early in his career. According to a period report in the Rocky Mountain News, “Light’s name had become a household word, and for years he was alluded to as a good sort of a fellow―to get away from. He was mixed up in many fights, and after a time the ‘respect’ he had commanded with the aid of a six-shooter began to fade away. It was recalled that all his killings and shooting scrapes occurred when the other man’s gun was elsewhere, or in other words, when the victim was powerless to return blow for blow and shot for shot.”

With his life apparently on the skids, Light developed a reputation of his own for drunken belligerence. With no other options, he returned to barbering in Temple until, during one drinking binge in late 1892, he pistol-whipped the railroad’s chief detective—the man Light blamed for the end of his law-enforcement career. During Light’s trial for assault, the detective, T.J. Coggins, rose from his seat in the courtroom, pulled his pistol, and fired three .44-caliber rounds into Light’s face and neck. Although doctors expected the former lawman to die of what they called mortal injuries, Light fully recovered. Adding insult to injury, Coggins never faced trial.

It’s unclear how well Light adapted to circumstances after the Coggins episode or why he was traveling by train a year later. What is clear is that his life came to a sudden, ironic end on Christmas Eve 1893. As the Missouri, Kansas & Texas train neared the Temple station, Light accidentally discharged a revolver he carried in his pocket. The bullet severed the femoral artery in his groin, and he bled to death within minutes. He was 30 years old.

In a span of fewer than ten years, Light’s brief candle flickered, blazed, and then burned out. Though once hailed as a heroic defender of law and order on the reckless frontier, not everyone was sorry to see him go. An unflattering obituary published in the Dec. 27, 1893, edition of the Rocky Mountain News called him "a bad man from Texas." Beneath the headline “Light’s Ready Gun. It Took Five Lives and then Killed Him,” the report noted “‘Cap’ Light of Belton, Texas, shot himself by accident the other day...thus [removing] one who has done more than his share in earning for the West the appellation of ‘wild and woolly.’”

Not every Christmas story comes to such a disastrous end. Prairie Rose will prove that beginning July 25, during "Christmas in July." Look for giveaways and special pricing on many PRP books, including the popular anthology Wishing for a Cowboy and my story "Peaches," which will be released as a short single. (I love the "Peaches" cover designed by Livia Washburn Reasoner. How 'bout y'all?)